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Illinois Public Media

IBM Returns Money for Supercomputer Project

August 17, 2011

IBM has returned $30 million to the University of Illinois that was meant to be used for the Blue Waters supercomputer project.

The technology company announced last week that it would withdraw from the project because of apparent cost and technical concerns. The University of Illinois will give the $30 million back to the National Science Foundation, which is supporting the project. John Melchi, the senior associate director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, said that money will continue to be used as part of the Blue Waters project.

"We believe that this machine will be one of the first of its kind, and by that I mean one of the first to provide sustained-petascale performance on a broad range of applications," Melchi said.

Melchi said NCSA is searching for a new vendor, but he wouldn't say when that search is expected to wrap up. He said the Blue Waters supercomputer should be operational by fall 2012.